Mus­tangs post fourth shutout

Solomon has two goals, Baker a goal and an as­sist

Meade’s Sa­muel Solomon no­ticed that team­mate Ri­ley Baker was hav­ing a great prac­tice Mon­day, tak­ing on ev­ery­one and scor­ing a lot of goals. Solomon hoped that ef­fort would carry over to Tues­day’s game at Broad­neck, and it did.

Solomon had two goals and Baker added a goal and an as­sist while the Mus­tangs de­fense posted its fourth shutout, 3-0 over the Bru­ins.

“We­havealot of speed and a lot of tal­ent in our at­tack,” Solomon said. “Af­ter Ri­ley’s prac­tice yes­ter­day, I im­me­di­ately looked to find him to­day, and luck­ily, we were able to get some goals out of it.”

The pace and tempo were ac­tu­ally to Broad­neck’s lik­ing early on, but the Mus­tangs (6-0-1) took ad­van­tage of their first scor­ing chance. Baker beat Broad­neck goal­keeper Fred­er­ick Hill to a ball high in the penalty box, took pos­ses­sion wide, and sent a cross over to Solomon, who fin­ished for the lead 14 min­utes in.

“It is all about play­ing off of Sam,” Baker said. “He was an all-state player last year, and play­ing off him has made things eas­ier.”

The early deficit put the Bru­ins (4-3) on their heels.

“Meade is a very good team,” Broad­neck coach Sean Tet­te­mer said. “They dic­tated the tempo of the game and played to their strengths. We were try­ing to catch up the en­tire game.”

Broad­neck had a chance to tie with 13:29 left in the first half. A long throw-in by Owen Joyce slipped through Meade goal­keeper Chris Marx’s hands, but could not find a Broad­neck foot. A minute later, Baker sprang Solomon again, but Hill came off the line and snuffed the chance. Baker would not miss his own chance sev­eral min­utes later, as the se­nior took a pass out on the left side from Solomon and buried it in the op­po­site cor­ner with 5:18 to play.

“I thought those two linked up very nicely to­day,” Meade coach Pat Hulede said of Solomon and Baker. “The great part about this team is we have a lot of fire­power. Ch­e­sa­peake fo­cused on Sam last game. This time, they were fo­cused on Si­las Baker, and that freed up Sam and Ri­ley a bit.”

In the sec­ond half, Broad­neck be­gan to cre­ate con­sis­tent op­por­tu­ni­ties up front, high­lighted by a near-miss off a free kick by Louie Ker­dock with 15 min­utes to play, and later had a se­ries of head­ers that forced two saves off the line by Meade de­fend­ers with just over four min­utes to play to keep the shutout in­tact.

“We showed some heart in the sec­ond half, and hope­fully we can build on that as we con­tinue our sea­son,” Tet­te­mer said.

Af­ter the sec­ond clear­ance off the end line, and with Broad­neck hav­ing so many play­ers up on the at­tack, Meade’s coun­ter­at­tack took ef­fect. A ball was played through that Solomon fought for and con­trolled about 35 yards out, and he then stayed one step ahead of two de­fend­ers while on the ball, be­fore fin­ish­ing for his12th goal of the young sea­son.

“I feel re­ally good about our team, and we are hav­ing a lot of fun right now,” Solomon said.

Hulede is try­ing not to jinx Solomon’s per­for­mance so far, but he was im­pressed by how his four-year starter scored his goals against Broad­neck.

“We had a con­ver­sa­tion about him scor­ing dif­fer­ent types of goals, and I think he did that to­day,” Hulede said. “He is hard to mark and, when he shares the ball at the top the way he does, it is hard to match up with us.”

Chris­tian Best and the Mus­tangs de­fend­ers made the fi­nal score stand up.

“The guys work pretty hard every day,” Best said. “We don’t play any games back there.”